


Going Home

by Glishara



Category: Chalion Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-03-01 06:16:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2762723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glishara/pseuds/Glishara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can never turn back time -- Cazaril returns to Gotorget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going Home

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "Cazaril and the retaking of Gotorget" for the [2008 Bujold Fest](http://community.livejournal.com/bujold_fic/88536.html)

Cazaril suspected it had been a mistake to come here. The stones of Gotorget were cool and wet from the driving rain, the memories frozen into them. He imagined that he could feel those memories, beneath his cold fingers. He could not see the ghosts any longer, but they were there, the gods knew, crowding close around him. How many, he wondered, accused him in their silent, still voices?

He gazed out over the battlefield below, pelted by the autumn storm. More men had died on that field in his lifetime than almost any other, in the furious back-and-forth conflict over the fortress. It seemed a dull prize, to pay so many lives for. Five years ago, he had almost been one of those clustering dead. Their own memories of themselves faded, but his was sharp and vivid. He remembered too many of those faces.

He turned his eyes to the west. Somewhere over the horizon, Iselle and Bergon rode with Palli into Jokona, chaotic and unguarded. Cazaril himself should have waited in Cardegoss, but this was a pilgrimage he needed to make, so he had imposed on his royina for a place in the war train, and had broken off here.

Dy Aranis, the keep’s warder, had been nonplussed to find the chancellor himself requesting a bed for a few days, but had recovered himself enough to find the space in an efficient manner Cazaril greatly appreciated. His room was simple, but more than he needed, to be certain. He had slept in worse until this very roof. It would do very well for him, he thought.

That first evening, he had stayed in his room, recovering from the ride. The young soldier who had brought his meal up had fidgeted nervously on putting it down. When had Chalion begun recruiting children, anyway? _Right around the time everyone under twenty started looking like a child to you, old man._ Faugh.

“It’s not much, my lord chancellor,” the boy said, awkwardly. “Captain dy Aranis said to tell you we will have something more tomorrow. It’s just the stew they’re giving everyone, tonight.”

Cazaril thought back on memorable meals in this keep: rat stew, roasted carrion birds, rotting turnips. They ate the dead, he mused, and we ate them. What does that make us?

Well, survivors. In the end.

“It will do very well for me,” he assured the boy. “Do your officers eat with the men, then?”

“Ah, usually, my lord, yes. Captain dy Aranis says it is good for morale, because the cook won’t serve slop to the officers, so the men eat better.”

Cazaril had to laugh at that. “A wise officer, I think. Thank you, soldier. I need nothing else tonight.”

The meal was certainly nothing like those in the Zangre, but the meat was fresh and had been cooked long enough to be gentle on the teeth. It was enough. Cazaril slept without dreaming.

The next day had dawned gray and drizzly. Cazaril had risen early and made his way to the mess hall, stiff and aching from the ride and the rest and the rain. He sat with a few soldier-brothers of the Son’s Order, eating his porridge and listening to their painfully stilted conversation. He left as soon as he could and set to prowling the corridors of Gotorget, seeing what was the same and what was different.

The mood of the place was much improved. Men walked their patrols with pride and dignity, and the off-duty men laughed and joked from behind closed doors. The practice fields were lively, with money changing hands on wagers and contests.

Dy Aranis pulled him aside after lunch, with a diffident, “My lord chancellor. Can I offer you a tour of the fortress?”

“I think I can remember it well enough on my own,” Cazaril answered ruefully. “Five gods know I spent enough time walking these halls in my day. The architecture, at least, is still the same.”

“Oh.” Dy Aranis paused, then said carefully, “Chancellor dy Cazaril, I think that your explorations are making the men… uncomfortable.”

Cazaril stared at him. “Uncomfortable?”

Dy Aranis cleared his throat, and straightened his back a shade more. “They… well, that is to say, we – Chancellor dy Cazaril, may I ask why you are visiting Gotorget?”

You can ask, but I don’t know if I have an answer… “I… am not certain. I served here, you know. During the siege.”

“I… yes, my lord, I had heard.”

“I had not been back since. It seemed the respectful thing to do.”

Dy Aranis grimaced. Cazaril read, _you are making the men uncomfortable_ , to mean, _why are you breathing down my neck, damn you?_ He grimaced back. “I should have given warning. I apologize. The opportunity presented itself, and I took it without much consideration for your order and discipline.”

With a little wave of his hand, dy Aranis tried to dismiss this concern, but it seemed hollow. “At any rate,” Cazaril went on, “I will plan to leave tomorrow. I should not be long from Cardegoss with the royina and royse-consort away, in truth.”

The warder nodded grateful acknowledgement, and Cazaril watched him move off again. Anonymous no more, he could no longer move with his old ease. He had grown used to that in the Zangre, but here, among the dead and the living warriors, he found it… unexpectedly chafing. Ah, well.

Going back to a place did not, after all, undo the years since one had left it. This visit did not bring back the dead or undo his pain. Even without his new status, he was not the same man that had left his pride broken on these old stones. No matter. He returned to his room to wait for dark.

As promised, supper that night was an officer’s feast. Cazaril wondered, a little dryly, whether the poor soldiers’ fare had been downgraded to compensate. They would not remember this visit with favor. He ate fine meals and drank good wine and listened to stories – told a few of his own, even, about these walls. The good stories, not the hard ones, of Palli and of himself and of brave men and victories. There were few enough of those.

Only after the meal was over, when the sky was fully dark, did he mount the stairs to the tower and dismiss the guard, staring out over the dark battlefields. It was here that his journey had begun. All of the pain and despair and humiliation of those desperate years, he had accepted long ago as the price of his own redemption. He had made a good work of that suffering, in the end, a wedding gift worthy of Iselle’s house.

But here, on the tower, surrounded by the invisible dead, he mourned for what his choice had cost them. “Goddess,” he told the dark night, “if you can, give them comfort. Grant they may forgive me.”

He only imagined the stirring of the air at that, he knew, as if the rain shifted or the ghosts slid away into the darkness. Sometimes, imagination was enough.

In the morning, he said his farewells and rode for home.


End file.
